Combating Rationalization: Refuting Deniers' Claims Concerning the Einsatzgruppen
by M. W.
A student essay from Dr. Elliot Neaman's History 210 class (historical methods - spring 1996)
© Elliot Neaman / PHDNReproduction interdite par quelque moyen que ce soit / no reproduction allowed
Introduction
Even before the first gassings took place at Auschwitz, Hitler's hand-picked SS was already killing Jews in Eastern Europe by the thousands. The early stages of the Final Solution can be traced to Hitler's orders concerning the elimination of the "Jewish-Bolshevist intelligentsia," which led to the creation of the Einsatzgruppen--special "action groups" (Hilberg, 17). These units were formed from the ranks of Reinhard Heydrich's SD (the intelligence division of the SS), the Nazi Police (the Security Police and the Order Police) and the general SS [See note 1]. The Einsatzgruppen operated behind the German army during the invasions of Eastern Europe, primarily in the Soviet Union. In attempts at solving the "Jewish problem," the Einsatzgruppen employed mass pogroms and mass shootings--often having the victims dig their own graves beforehand. Unlike the bureaucratic methods of the death camps in Poland, the Einsatzgruppen left behind only sporadic amounts evidence which makes it difficult to estimate the actual number of Jews killed by these groups. Lucy Dawidowicz points out that the International Military Tribunal set up at Nuremberg to punish Nazi war criminals estimated the number of deaths at about 2 million persons (Dawidowicz, 12). Although other scholars shy away from the 2 million estimate, most, such as Deborah Lipstadt, are in agreement that the number of Jewish deaths which occurred at the hands of the Einsatzgruppen is "well over one million" (78).
The fundamental structure of the Einsatzgruppen was in place before the invasion of Austria in March of 1938. While such units of the Order and Security Police may not have been performing the same duties as they would in the invasion of Russia, they were existent in some form during the marches into both Austria and Czechoslovakia. By September of 1939, as Hitler prepared to invade Poland, the Einsatzgruppen leaders were receiving orders from Heydrich about the Nazi policy toward the Jews. This first policy, devised and put into action by Heinrich Himmler, was to consist of forcing the Jews from Poland while German troops expanded the borders of the envisioned German empire (Browning, Genocide 8-9). But that was only the first step in the Einsatzgruppen's development toward their eventual function as mobile killing units.
Such Holocaust historians as Christopher Browning, Raul Hilberg, and Richard Breitman agree that the Einsatzgruppen would eventually evolve in to one of the first applications of the Final Solution. Most historians agree that while the early manifestations and work of the Einsatzgruppen is at times ambiguous, the true nature of the Einsatzgruppen as killing units took shape in 1941, on the eve of Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union [see note 2]. Operating behind the ever-advancing German army, these killing units began rounding up Russian commissars, communists, and other potentially subversive leaders. But as Hitler's obsession with the "Jewish problem" increased, the Einsatzgruppen began mass killings of Jewish men. Many historians state that the original orders relayed to the Einsatzgruppen were ambiguous, such as the removal of "the Jewish-Bolshevik intelligence" mentioned by Hilberg. While the first killings consisted mainly of Jewish men, soon these units were murdering women and children as well.
The actions of the Einsatzgruppen in relation to the entirety of the Holocaust has provoked some key debates among historians. Christopher Browning maintains that it was the detrimental psychological effects that these mass murders were having on the personnel of the Einsatzgruppen that lead Himmler to order "his crime lab scientists to experiment with killing methods that would be 'more humane' for his executioners" (Browning, Genocide 83). Others, like Lucy Dawidowicz, claim that it was not necessarily the harsh effects the killings had on Einsatzgruppen members that lead to the implication of the death camps, but just a logistical consideration in the Final Solution (13). Daniel Jonah Goldhagen proposes a similar view in stating that "Himmler, ever the pragmatist, had initially detailed the Einsatzkommandos [ individual units of the Einsatzgruppen], as a prelude to the full battle, to engage in probing forays in order to test their mettle against the enemy" (152). Goldhagen argues further that this concern for efficiency was only created because of the need to "ease the psychological burden of killing for the Germans" (157). In any case, whether the implementation of the gas chambers occurred because of psychological or logistical concerns, what is of note here is that although the means of killing may have changed, the end result would most likely have been the same if either mobile of stationary killing units were used. In one case the victims are brought to their death, in the other death finds them. Both methods produce the same result [see note 3].
As much as scholars may disagree about certain aspects of the Einsatzgruppen, they all maintain that the killings did actually occur. As obvious as that may sound, there has been, in recent years, a growth in so-called Holocaust denial. Many pseudo-historians have put forth claims that the Holocaust was a "hoax." Although the motives behind Holocaust denial are quite numerous, its basic goal is to discredit Holocaust evidence as fabrications and exaggerations. Although the actual evidence is overwhelmingly in support of the reality of the Holocaust and its gruesome atrocities, deniers feed on anti-Semitic tendencies, as well as general ignorance in various European and North American countries, in order to propound their outlandish theories. By claiming that the "Jews are not victims but victimizers" instead, deniers seem adamant in their attempts to establish that the Holocaust was no more than an international Zionist conspiracy headed by none other than the Jewish community (Lipstadt, 23).
In any discussion of Holocaust denial it is of the utmost importance to highlight both the anti-Semitic and extremist right wing ideologies that play such a prominent role in denial motives, techniques, and literature [see note 4]. Many right-wing political groups view Holocaust denial as a way with which to resurrect national socialism. The realities of the Holocaust have blackened the image of national socialism and thus, as Lipstadt explains, "before fascism can be resurrected, this blot must be removed" (23). Xenophobic right-wing ideologies are all to common not only in the European continent, but also in Britain, Canada, and the United States, and thus, there is a ready-made audience for the preposterous claims put forth by deniers. Denial tries to cleanse right wing or National Front politics, but, ultimately, this alliance only further exposes the racist tendencies of both extremist ideologies and Holocaust denial. Ultimately, the danger of Holocaust denial lies not only in its ties to extremist right-wing ideology, but also in its attack on the unquestionable validity of truth.
I intend to outline and examine the claims made by deniers in regards to the role of the Einsatzgruppen in the extermination of European Jewry. In doing so, I wish to show exactly why the deniers' claims have no valid basis for consideration, both in academia and in ordinary life. This paper is not intended to propound denier claims as a legitimate "opposing view" in scholarly debate, but rather, I hope to prove exactly why these claims must not be considered as legitimate scholarly work. It is my intent to expose the absurdities imminent in these claims by citing some of the most recent work in Holocaust scholarship. In examining the Einsatzgruppen I will also examine some aspects of the trials at Nuremberg because that is where a majority of evidence concerning these mobile "action units" was first presented, and thus, I must also examine denier's claims concerning the validity of that evidence.
The Deniers and Their Claims
In the guise of scholarly revisionism [see note 5], which has legitimate origins, Holocaust deniers have made numerous attacks on the validity of evidence concerning the numerous atrocities committed by the Einsatzgruppen in Eastern Europe. In examining denier material concerning the Einsatzgruppen, I discovered that the three most pertinent denier works dealing with the subject were The Myth of the Sixth Million, which was authored anonymously, Nuremberg and Other War Crimes Trials: A New Look by Richard Harwood [see note 6], and The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, by Arthur Butz, one of the premier authors in the realm of Holocaust denial.
In my research I found that there were roughly five different tactics employed by deniers. First off, many works by deniers completely ignore the Einsatzgruppen. They focus instead on such topics as the gas chambers at Auschwitz where they can quibble over statistics and supposedly "scientific" surveys of the methods of mass gassings. This approach is similar to another archetypal denier claim: all evidence we have was fabricated. The Myth of the Six Million brazenly concludes that the entire notion of the Jewish genocide "is a deliberate and brazen falsification" (104). In the publisher's foreword to the Third Edition of The Myth of the Six Million, this response to a questioning of one of the books' numerous false statistical findings typifies both the deniers' belief in an overwhelmingly immense conspiracy and the deniers' overt anti-Semitism: "We cannot verify this assertion, but knowing the decided proclivity of the Zionists to falsify history by removing or forging documents we certainly cannot state with finality that the statement is false. Based on the veracity of the book's thesis, as well as the data presented, we are not inclined to seriously question the statement." Butz uses this belief in wide-spread fabrication, along with a host of other tactics, in his approach at "explaining" the Einsatzgruppen. According to Butz, the only actual evidence concerning the Einsatzgruppen that seemed incriminating was the single fact that there were executions. Butz claims that the need to produce more evidence, as if the executions were not enough, provided a "motivation for manufacturing these documents on such a large scale" (200). Butz goes on to differentiate between this act of forgery, which he argues is Soviet in origin, and the "Auschwitz hoax," which is American in Origin. We will see how this belief in mass forgery, and subsequent perjury, takes shape in denier claims about the validity of evidence presented at Nuremberg in just a moment.
Overt avoidance and claims that all evidence we have concerning the Einsatzgruppen are maliciously fabricated are only two tactics of the deniers. Other approaches are much less bold than the assertion that there was a large-scale conspiracy of fabrication. Most of the remaining tactics attempt to either justify or rationalize the actions of the Einsatzgruppen. To do this, deniers take a myriad of approaches. The anonymous author of The Myth of the Six Million tries to completely alter the role of the Einsatzgruppen by making it seem as if these SS squads worked to "prevent massacres of Jews organized by local people in Russia behind the German front" (48). Butz also makes an effort at altering the role of the Einsatzgruppen by stating, quite ambiguously, that the only task assigned to the Einsatzgruppen was to combat partisan activity, as if this was separate from the task of total Jewish extermination [see note 7]. Butz concedes that many Jews were probably killed during this activity, but this was because of the necessary actions needed to control partisan dangers (197). This attempt to rationalize the actions of the Einsatzgruppen as merely necessary tactics in combating guerrilla warfare within the German lines is characteristic of much of Butz' claim, which is, as we have seen, a hybrid of various tactics. Butz maintains that the actions of the Einsatzgruppen are excusable because of the unhappy fact that partisan warfare is a "regular feature of the twentieth century" (204). Indeed, Butz chastises his reader: "It is too easy for us, sitting in the warmth of our living rooms, to generate moral indignation over operations which involve the killing of 'apparent civilians, including women and children'" (204).
The deniers' attempts at any sort of rationalization or justification of the policies of the Einsatzgruppen rely heavily on refuting the Nuremberg [see note 8] evidence. Not only do deniers claim that a majority of the evidence submitted at Nuremberg was fabricated, but they also claim that much of the testimony presented by such Einsatzgruppen leaders as Otto Ohlendorf, commander of Einsatzgruppe D, was reached only after hours of torture. Claims that torture was used can be found in almost all denier material concerning Nuremberg. Both Harwood [see note 9] and Butz rely heavily on this claim.
In sum, the deniers claim that the Einsatzgruppen had no direct order to exterminate Jews in occupied territories, but instead, they were created solely for the purpose of combating guerrilla warfare (the killing of commissars), and even prevented Jewish massacre in some instances, as odd as that may sound. Furthermore, if members of these units did kill Jews, it was only a by-product of this need to suppress partisan activity, and the number of victims is, in any case, not as high as the Military Tribunals at Nuremberg suggest. As with general Holocaust denial, deniers of the Einsatzgruppen maintain that there was no deliberate plan to exterminate European Jews. As Harwood explained of the evidence submitted during the Ohlendorf trial at Nuremberg: "Not a single page was produced which mentioned 'extermination' and bore the signature of any Nazi commander" (40).
Refuting the Deniers' Claims
All Holocaust deniers seem to ignore the burden of proof in their arguments, thus it is necessary that any attempt at refuting their claims must rely on solid evidence. Because of this very reason, the Nuremberg Trials are perhaps the most important subject when confronting deniers' views of the Einsatzgruppen. While of a majority of the claims made by deniers concerning the procedure used at, and the evidence submitted during both the IMT and the NMT , is easily dismissed because of their troubling lack of evidence or even simple logic, some arguments require a precise examination of the actions and evolution of the Einsatzgruppen.
In regards to the procedures of both the IMT and the NMT, denier claims that incriminating testimonies, such as Ohlendorf's, were only reached after hours of torture are supported by absolutely no evidence. It is precisely because of this fact that my research of Holocaust scholarship has turned up no mention of torture employed at Nuremberg. Yet this haunting lack of evidence does not stop Butz. In attempts to cover for this problem of proof, Butz goes on to examine the nature, implications, and complications of torture in general, as if it were relevant to the trials. Beyond the claim that torture was employed to obtain incriminating testimonies, many deniers claim that the evidence presented at Nuremberg was fabricated on an unfathomable scale.
While such outlandish claims cannot be refuted by the use of evidence, one can easily dismantle such illogical arguments. For example, if torture was truly used as a means of obtaining self-incrimination on such a wide scale, wouldn't there have been some sort of evidence of it that leaked out? Not every person tried at Nuremberg was sentenced to either execution or life imprisonment, surely they would have revealed the rampant use of torture if there really was any. They most surely would have sought some sort of retribution. Present Holocaust scholars are today sifting through the Nuremberg evidence to assess its validity, surely they would have come across evidence of mass torture somewhere. As far as the notion that fabricated evidence was used at Nuremberg, Deborah Lipstadt refutes the claim flatly: "Why, if the propagandists responsible for the hoax were so successful at producing such a vast array of documents did they not produce the one piece of paper deniers claim would convince them there had been a Final Solution--that is, an order from Hitler authorizing the destruction of the Jews?" (127-8). In the cases of both torture and fabrication, deniers rely heavily on this belief of a monumental conspiracy. The likelihood that both of these tactics would go unnoticed or unchallenged for so long (there has been no question of either torture or fabrication in legitimate scholarly work even today) is really quite absurd.
As denier arguments become less fantastical they are more easily refuted because we can resort to the simple use of evidence. Such as the claim made in The Myth of the Six Million that the Einsatzgruppen actually worked to prevent the massacre of Jews at the hands of civilians. While there is little debate over the fact that there were deep anti- Semitic sentiments in the populations in various parts of the expanding German front, it is highly doubtful that the Einsatzgruppen made attempts to stop the murders of Jews. Rather, the Einsatzgruppen and various other Police Battalions readily employed the aid of civilians in occupied territories [see note 10]. As Hilberg points out, the original size of the Einsatzgruppen was far too big to kill a few commissars, but "for the total annihilation of Soviet Jewry they were, unaided, much too small" (17). Thus, during the campaign in the Soviet Union, many Einsatzgruppen leaders did "try to enlist local Lithuanians, Latvians, or Ukrainians to do the dirty work," and ultimately spare the "Germans from carrying out such gruesome tasks" (Goldhagen 149). It seems that Heydrich himself recognized this need for additional "help." He was quite in support of this employment of "local henchmen" (149).
The claim that lies at the heart of deniers' ideology is that, like the entire Holocaust, there were no specific orders put forth concerning the extermination of European Jewry. As mentioned previously, deniers will admit that Jews were killed, but only because of military necessity. Legitimate scholarship has uncovered a wealth of evidence contrary to this claim. Although many orders pertaining to the "Jewish solution" were given orally, the documentation we now have concerning the work of the Einsatzgruppen is far less secretive than anything pertaining to the function of the death camps in Poland. These pieces of evidence make it painfully clear that the Einsatzgruppen were to do more than simply combat partisan activity. The Einsatzgruppen, Order Police, and other various SS regiments that followed on the heels of the German army during the invasion of the Soviet Union received orders similar to the following:
Explicit Order by RF-SS [Himmler]
All Jews must be shot
Jewish women are to be driven into the swamps (Hilberg, 58)
[see note 11].
The Einsatzgruppen's deliberate attempt to completely annihilate the Jewish population is further evidenced in the arduous training process employed by the Germans to prepare members of the Einsatzgruppen for such heinous work. Before their entrance into the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen regiments were put through about two months worth of "training." This training consisted primarily of attendance at Nazi rallies and lectures outlining the Jewish problem and exulting the coming "war of destruction." Often, these training sessions culminated in a personal meeting in Berlin with none other than Reinhard Heydrich himself (Browning, Ordinary 183).
In his analysis of the German Foreign Office during the Holocaust, Christopher Browning demonstrates how numerous Einsatzgruppen reports illuminate the actions taken by these squads in the killing of large communities of European Jews. Although the Foreign Office--which housed the Foreign Office Jewish desk that was responsible for the Jewish concerns of the Reich--was not informed officially of the massacres in the Soviet Union at first, there is little doubt that unofficial sources conveyed the news with regularity (Browning, Final 72). The Office would be officially informed starting in 1941 when "Activity and Situation Reports of the Einsatzgruppen of the Sipo-SD in Russia" were made for the office on orders from Heydrich (72). The nature of the first five of these Situation reports reflect quite clearly the evolution and purpose of the Einsatzgruppen's activities in the Soviet Union. In the first two of the five initial reports Jewish executions were buried among accounts of partisan executions. But the third report saw the inclusion of a separate heading for statistics relating to the Jewish question (73). There was no longer any doubt that Jewish massacres were not one in the same with "antipartisan measures." A compilation of the first six reports [see note 12], which was ultimately sent to Joachim von Ribbentrop, stated that an average of 70,000 to 80,000 Jews had been murdered by each Sonderkommando [see note 13] during the periods covered by the reports (74). With these reports in hand, it was hard to deny that a policy of extermination was in place.
As the invasion of Russia continued, more reports were made for the Foreign office. Whether it was because of brash openness or twisted pride, the "pretense of treating the executions as counterinsurgency measures was dropped in favor of proclaiming the solution of the Jewish question" (75). The eleven reports not only illuminate the motives behind the killings done by the Einsatzgruppen, but they also record some valuable statistical data. Although the killings in Russia may have begun in the guise of anti-partisan activities, it became quite evident that one of the true objectives of the Einsatzgruppen was to eliminate the Jews.
The Truth About the Einsatzgruppen
Although there were Einsatzgruppen that participated in the annexations of Czechoslovakia and Austria, as well as the invasion of Poland which went by the code name "Tannenburg," the true form of these units did not take shape until the eve of the Russian invasion. At this time four Einsatzgruppen were created: A, B, C, and D. Each Einsatzgruppen was divided into two major sub-units, the Sonderkommandos and the Einsaztkommandos. In theory, the Einsatzkommandos were to operate behind the lines while the Sonderkommandos worked much closer to the advancing front lines, but this distinction became hazy and both operated rather freely. On average, each Einsatzgruppen consisted of two each of these sub-units.
Each Einsatzgruppen was ultimately responsible to only two people, Heydrich and Himmler. Because of struggles with the German army and a "sensitivity about international law," much of Himmler's policies were not set in writing at first (Breitman, 75). Even though the offensive in Russia may have begun with an air of secrecy and ambiguity about exactly who the Einsatzgruppen were to execute--political prisoners or all Jews--, the leaders of these units very likely knew of the final goal desired by Hitler of a judenfrei ("Jew Free") Russia that would be achieved through mass murder (Browning, Genocide 101). Holocaust historians seem to agree that the first five weeks of the Russian Einsatzgruppen campaign saw the murders mainly of adult Jewish males. Whether this was because of the lack of an early and specific order to exterminate all Jews, or whether the ambiguity caused by the lack of a specific order lead to the gradual development of one as the killings in Russia grew, is hard to say. Although historians may disagree about whether or not there was a specific order to exterminate all Jews prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, and Poland for that matter, all concede that a distant "Final goal" was well-known.
Whatever the reason, the killings of all Jews was soon underway in the Soviet Union. Einsatzgruppen A, under the leadership of Dr. Franz Walter Stahlecker, operated mainly in the Baltic States--Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Einsatzgruppen B, headed by Arthur Nebe, was attached to Army Group Center and worked primarily in Belorussia and the Smolensk district up to Moscow. Einsatzgruppen C fell under the leadership of Dr. Emil Otto and operated in southern and central Ukraine. Otto Ohlendorf, who would later be the main defendant in the Einsatzgruppen case at Nuremberg, headed Einsatzgruppen D in southern Ukraine and Crimea.
The first mass killing performed by an Einsatzkommando occurred on only the third day of operation Barbarossa when 201 persons, mostly Jews, were shot in Garsden, Lithuania (Goldhagen, 152). The only constant throughout the Einsatzgruppen killings was the continual experimentation of killing methods. Indeed, the tactics used by the Einsatzgruppen varied greatly between Einsatzkommandos. The most general method employed throughout the entire Russian campaign was mass shootings. The massacres at Babi Yar [see note 14] in September of 1941 can be taken as an example of Einsatzgruppen killing methods. Over 33,000 Jews were killed at Babi Yar, a ravine just outside of Kiev. Breitman describes the murders: "They were forced to lie face down, and the executioners, also at the base of the ravine, equipped with Schmeisser automatic rifles, tried to shoot them in the back of the head, per instructions. Because of the mass of victims, some were shot several times over, others only wounded. Then the next batch came in an lay down on top of the first...The killers worked in shifts, and they were kept supplied with ammunition and rum. At the end of the day lime chloride was spread on top of the layers of bodies" (212). Most Einsatzgruppen killings, while not of such large scale, were similar to those at Babi Yar. Some of the largest massacres during the initial phase of operation Barbarossa saw the murders of 23,600 in Kamenets-Podolski on August 27-28, 1941; 19,000 in Minsk, during November 1941; 21,000 in Rovno, again in November, 1941; 25,000 near Riga in late November and early January, 1941; and 10,000 to 20,000 in Kharkov in January 1942 (Goldhagen, 154). Generally, such executions would take place only after Nazi-encouraged pogroms had already claimed many Jewish Lives. It should be remembered that the Einsatzgruppen operated with aid from not only other para-military divisions such as the reserve Police Battalions, but also local militias. But as much as the Einsatzgruppen enlisted the aid of other organizations to do some of their vile work, the heavy psychological toll that the mass killings took on the executioners led higher officers to experiment with new methods of mass execution. This experimentation would lead to the development and use of gas vans.
Browning pinpoints the development and use of gas vans as a means of extermination in mid-August, 1941(Genocide, 81). Apparently, it was during this time that Himmler had made one of his numerous visits to the Eastern front. Responding to the concerns that Einsatzgruppen leaders had voiced about the immense psychological burdens of mass shootings on their troops, Himmler approved and encouraged the use of gas vans. The use of either the vehicle's own exhaust or even bottled carbon monoxide in certain cases may have removed the killings from the immediate sight of the killers, but it was still an unsatisfactory means of execution: "Apart from the screams of the victims during the final five to ten minutes, there was the mess to clean up afterward--an unbelievable tangle of bodies covered with excrement" (Breitman, 214). But the need for mobile gassing units was to be soon eclipsed by the increasing feasibility of permanent gassing installations in Poland.
The relation of the Einsatzgruppen to the development of permanent gassing installations is clear. The inadequacies of the Einsatzgruppen methods lead both Heydrich and Himmler to search out a more "productive" alternative. As Browning explains, "three programs already in operation--the concentration camp system, the euthanasia program, and the large-scale ventures in forced emigration and population resettlement were merged together," to create a more efficient means of extermination (Browning, Final 8). The death camps would be the culmination of the continuous experimentation employed by the Einsatzgruppen in hopes of discovering the most efficient means of executing their plans of genocide. Although the death camps in Poland would eventually render the Einsatzgruppen method of killing "as obsolete as a cottage industry" (9), one must always bear in mind that the Einsatzgruppen were both the first implementation of the Final Solution, as well as one of the main reasons for the development and use of the death camps.
The roles of Heydrich and Himmler throughout the entire Einsatzgruppen campaign, and its subsequent evolution into the final phase of the Final Solution, the death camps, cannot be ignored. Himmler's responsibility for the resolution of the "Jewish Problem" is all too clear [see note 15]. He made numerous visits to the eastern front to oversee the activities of the Einsatzgruppen himself and, as evinced by his role in encouraging the development of more efficient and less burdensome means of killing, was responsible for all aspects of the Jewish genocide. In fact, it is reported that after witnessing an Einsatzgruppen massacre Himmler was shaken by what he had seen, but, in the end, he ultimately assured the executioners that "he and Hitler alone bore the responsibility for their difficult but necessary task" (Browning, Genocide, 110). While Heydrich's main concern was with the Einsatzgruppen and Police Battalions, he would eventually be working in close relation with Himmler to develop a more extensive plan for the Final Solution. Indeed, by the end of 1941, Heydrich had already been coordinating his actions with those of Himmler for some time (Breitman, 215). In fact, by October of that year, Himmler and Heydrich had agreed to disallow any further Jewish emigration overseas because plans for the use of death camps were already being implemented (215). Although so much of the Final Solution can be traced to the works of Heydrich, Himmler, and, ultimately, Hitler, this should by no means excuse all other participants from responsibility (Breitman, 248). I have merely used their leadership as evidence of the far-reaching goals of the Final Solution and therefore, the actions of the Einsatzgruppen as well.
By 1943 serious problems were festering on the German eastern front. The Soviet victory at Stalingrad had stopped the incessant German expansion into Russia and forced Hitler to rethink his plans for the eastern theater. Having been preempted by the use of death camps, and with the collapse of the Russian front, the Einsatzgruppen played a much smaller role in the Final Solution after 1943. But the Einsatzgruppen had done what they what they were originally created to do: to "spearhead the wholesale slaughter" of Jews in the conquered territories of the Soviet Union (Goldhagen, 148).
The Einsatzgruppen activities were treated in a separate trial at Nuremberg from September 15, 1947 to April 10, 1948. Case 9, The United States of America v. Otto Ohlendorf et al., tried all remaining and captured officers of the special task forces. In all, 24 commanders of Einsatzgruppen and Einsatzkommando units were tried on three indictments: crimes against humanity, conventional war crimes, and membership in organizations declared criminal and illegal by the International Military Tribunal (case records, 2-3) [see note 16]. The prosecution included evidence pertaining only to the periods between May, 1941 and July, 1943 (2). The four main defenses claimed by those standing trial consisted of the following: ignorance of an order to eliminate Jews, gypsies, and communists, as well as ignorance of any of the subsequent killings; non-participation in carrying out such orders; the legality of the orders and actions protected them; the killings were a response to superior orders (181). On April 10, 1948, the tribunal sentenced 14 of the defendants to death by hanging, two to life imprisonment, three to 20 years imprisonment, two to ten years imprisonment, and one final defendant to time served (3) [see note 17]. All but four of the death sentences were commuted however, and the only four defendants to be hanged were Blobel, Braune, Naumann, and Ohlendorf (4).
Conclusion
The inclusion of the Einsatzgruppen and other similar organizations into the realm of Holocaust scholarship has greatly aided in our present knowledge of the Holocaust. The brutal deeds carried out by members of the Einsatzgruppen afford the historian no comforting sense of perpetrating anonymity. Unlike the faceless bureaucracy of death that characterized the death camps, the Einsatzgruppen's heinous crimes were committed by identifiable persons in painfully obvious ways. The Einsatzgruppen killings remind us that the Final Solution was not some amorphous idea of a distant past. And that is why Holocaust denial is so very pernicious.
Although the actions of the Einsatzgruppen leave no doubt that one of the ultimate goals of the Nazi regime was to exterminate all Jews of Europe, the views presented by deniers attempt to erase all memory of such deeds, tempting the acts of the past into a repeat performance. The claims of deniers take on an intensely foreboding aura when one is reminded of their ties to anti-Semitic and extremist ideologies. Indeed, if deniers were to be successful in their attempts to rationalize, and ultimately justify the Holocaust, there is no telling whether or not modern society will be able to avoid repeating its decidedly evil legacy. Ignorance of the past invites it to become the future.
Luckily, the motives of the deniers prove far more alarming then their actual arguments. As evidenced in this work, denier claims lack any factual basis, are alarmingly devoid of any sort of honest logic, and are entirely contradictory. Deniers will claim that all evidence of the Final Solution was a complete fabrication, then they will use that evidence as proof that there was never a specific order for extermination. Indeed, the danger lay not in refuting the denier's malicious claims. Rather, it is in how one approaches the issue that proves hazardous. For once the deniers have achieved the status of an opposing view in a valid historical debate, they have achieved most of their goal. In recognizing denier theories as valid and debate-worthy topics, one is admitting that there is some substance to their arguments.
I do not to intend to do such with this paper. Throughout this work I have repeatedly put forth not only evidence that demolishes denier claims and logic, but also evidence that highlights the illegitimacy and depravity of their work. It is my sincere hope that I have accomplished such without lending undue attention to such pernicious organizations.
To conclude, I am reminded of Lucy Dawidowicz's remark in the foreword of her work on historians and the Holocaust: "The present is, after all, a relic of the past, a historical deposit left by the wash of time" (1). To attempt to erase the past is to destroy the present. To understand the past, and all its repulsive evils, is to shape the future. By remembering the Holocaust, we make every effort to avoid its recurrence.
Notes
1. The actual make-up of the Einsatzgruppen has been debated. On the whole, most holocaust historians have agreed that the general body of the Einsatzgruppen was taken from the ranks of the SS and the Security Police, even though there were other organizations, such as the Order Police that performed many of the same tasks as the actual Einsatzgruppen. For the role of other early genocidal groups see Christopher R. Browning's book, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (Harper Collins, 1992). It should also be noted that German troops did have some aid in their work from civilians. The role of both German and non-German civilians in the mass killings of European Jews is discussed in a new book by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen entitled Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (Knopf, 1996).
2. This is not to say that the Einsatzgruppen was uninvolved in the actions in Poland. Quite the contrary. As Breitman points out, the Einsatzgruppen "had liquidated thousands of prominent Poles and Jews under the cover of war" (146).
3. For an interesting examination of the "intentionalist" and "functionalist" views of the Final Solution see Christopher Browning's The Path To Genocide: Essays On Launching The Final Solution, (Cambridge University Press, 1992). Browning devotes an entire chapter to the subject.
4. For the most authoritative examination of Holocaust denial and its connection to extremist political groups see Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (Plume, 1994), by Deborah Lipstadt.
5. In regards to the evolution of Holocaust denial, of which I do not have the space to cover competently enough, see Lipstadt.
6. I have included this work for the reason mentioned earlier that much of our evidence of the actions of the Einsatzgruppen comes from the International and American Military Tribunals at Nuremberg. Harwood's book attempts to lay doubt to some of that evidence.
7. This claim was originally put forth by Harry Elmer Barnes, an early denier. For an examination of Barnes' claims see Lipstadt, pages 67-83.
8. In my discussion of Nuremberg I will be using both the International and Nuremberg Tribunals. Although evidence of Einsatzgruppen activity was used at the IMT, the majority of evidence that we now have today comes from the NMT trial of Otto Ohlendorf et al.
9. It should be noted that Richard Harwood is actually the pseudonym for Richard Verrall, the editor of Spearhead, a publication of the British right-wing neofascist organization the National Front (Lipstadt, 104).
10. Rather than suppress the anti-Semitism present in these territories, the Einsatzgruppen enlisted the help of these anti-Semites unabashedly. See both Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing..., and Browning, Ordinary Men, for a more extensive analysis of the role of these individuals.
11. This particular order was sent to the 2nd Cavalry Regiment of the SS Cavalry Brigade as Hilberg points out. Hilberg even records that the reply to this particular order claimed that driving the women into the swamps was not very efficient.
12. The data presented is actually a summary of the first five reports because the latest report had already been summarized when the request came. The time period covered by these reports is roughly from July 1941 to September of that same year. The reports themselves started arriving in November. (Browning, Final 74-75).
13. The Sonderkommandos, like the Einsatzkommandos, were sub-units of the Einsatzgruppen. Technically, the Sonderkommandos were to be attached to armed forces near the front lines while Einsatzkommandos worked further behind the lines. This distinction meant little in actual practice, however.
14. For an interesting examination of the interpretation of Babi Yar in Soviet history see Lucy S. Dawidowicz's work, The Holocaust an the Historians, pages 83-84.
15. For the most extensive examination of Himmler and his role in orchestrating the Final Solution, see Richard Breitman's work, The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (Knopf, 1991).
16. These case records are the published briefs of the actual microfilm holdings of the National Archives and Records Service in Washington, DC For my purposes, the descriptions of the individual microfilm rolls were adequate, but if they are so desired, the microfilm holdings can ordered by following the instructions printed at the end of the book.
17. There were only 22 sentencings because two of the original 24 defendants had since been dropped from the trial. Emil Haussmann committed suicide immediately after the filing of the indictment (case records, 111), and Otto Rasch's case was dropped due to the advanced nature of Parkinson's disease (137).
Works Cited
Breitman, Richard. The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution. New York: Knopf, 1991.
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. New York: Harper Collins, 1992.
Browning, Christopher R. The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland 1940-43. New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc., 1978.
Browning, Christopher R. The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution. Cambridge: University Press, 1992.
Butz, Arthur R. The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry. Newport Beach, California: Institute For Historical Review, 1976, 1992.
Dawidowicz, Lucy S. The Holocaust and the Historians. Harvard, University Press, 1981.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Knopf, 1996.
Harwood, Richard. Nuremberg and Other War Crimes Trials: A New Look. Chapel Ascote, England: Historical Review Press, 1978.
Hilberg, Raul. Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945. New York: Haper Collins, 1992.
Lipstadt, Deborah E. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory. New York: Plume, 1994.
Nuremberg War Crimes Trials Records of Case 9: United States v. Otto Ohlendorf et al. September 15 1947 - April 10, 1948. Complied by John Mendelsohn. National Archives and Records Service, General Services Administration. Washington: 1978.
The Myth of the Six Million. Torrance, California: The Noontide Press, 1978.
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